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Brush
We decided to give Chris Christensen's products a try after our previous Madan brushes started to wear off. Chris Christensen's products are known to be one of the best in the dog show market, the quality of materials used for their brushes and combs are always voted by professional groomers to be durable, safe and comfortable for dogs. However the downside is that Chris Christensen's products are very expensive, in this case we will recommend for owners to have at least some basic understandings about dog grooming before buying.

We spent over $300 getting a few of Chris Christensen's products, mainly the #000 - 7.5inch Butter Comb, 20mm Gold Pin, Mark II Small Slicker and some conditioners. Upon receiving our items, we opened each of them up and checked the for defects thoroughly, everything was expectedly well received, no scratches or any defect noticed.

Below we will list down individual brushes/comb and our thoughts on it, note that this is not a professiona…

Dogs bark for a reason, just like why babies cry, it means something is wrong and you need to fix it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with training a dog not to bark, when dogs bark it actually means something is wrong - intruders, attention seeking, communication, hazard, hypersensitivity, in discomfort/pain.

Never listen to people that say that dogs bark because they are dogs, they can actually get extremely stressed barking all day long and soon enough health issues will start to surface at early stages, and this can means harm to both physical and mental state.

Before you continue reading on, we just want to clarify that this is in fact just our personal opinion and view, we are not any representative or any sort of affiliation, if you are easily offended by any form of views towards, people, animals and/or animals treatment, please do not continue reading below.Animals captivity
During our trip in Japan, we also went to Ueno zoo, this was one of the more popular zoos in Japan, it was really big and there were lots of animals there, however upon reaching we had already seen poor pandas being enclosed in glasses, it was still okay to see them in glasses but the problem is these glasses were divided into 2 parts, to separate the two pandas so that viewers will be able to enjoy more views. It was really sad to see this, and we could feel the panda's boredom, they were not really moving much, and when the staffs removed the dividers for feeding time, these pandas looked excited and …

Amber is doing well as usual, learning new commands and tricks to impress children and her caretakers. Now she will be 2 years old this December, her character is more or less fixed and we want to share with you her strengths and weaknesses. This is not to compare, but to let people understand that all dogs no matter how well they look will still have their weaknesses, and that doesn't mean we should give up.

Weaknesses:

High energy
We expected Amber to be in the high energy category but she was way beyond our expectation, for her size and age this was the most hyper active dog we have ever seen. Even at almost 2 years of age, the excitement level did not reduce much, 1 hour walk is the minimum amount for Amber, even after returning from walks and bathing she will still run about in the house, asking for more exercises and play time.

Rarely did we get to see Amber being relaxed, even with proper training this was the best she could be, we can't imagine how bad it would've b…

We recently caught up with a friend, an adopter who is also a dog rescuer, she just gotten to know of our training services and we talked for quite a while. Through our conversation she came to know that we actually recommended cages instead of letting dogs free roam, so she asked this, "why do you want to cage dogs?", I thought for a moment and then decided to explain briefly the pros and cons of introducing dogs cages especially when owners cannot be there to monitor them, we thought that it would be great if our readers can hear both sides of the story. Do note that there were no disagreement during the conversation, everything was purely sharing of our theories and we respect each other's decision.

She told us that her advisor, who is also the head of the foundation did not recommend placing a dog in the cage, he advised everyone to let their dogs roam freely even at night. Knowing that we do training and boarding, she wanted my opinions on this matter. I explained t…

Ever heard about dog communicators? Well we want to share our opinions on them, personally we feel that more and more people are engaging in these people rather than getting professional help. We think that this is a very serious issue and hopefully readers of our blog can learn a thing or two from our opinions, then decide for yourselves whether or not you want to place your trust in those that call themselves dog communicators.

Note: At the time of writing this post, we had actually visited Sopra Ginza twice and have different opinions on both visits, we will separate them into 2 parts - "First Visit" and "Second Visit".

First Visit
Sopra Ginza was founded in Japan, we do not know how popular they were in Japan but what we knew was that this shop is getting more and more popular in Singapore. We were actually curious if it was because of paid advertisements, or was it because of the hype that it originated from Japan (Singaporeans are very fond of Japanese cultures), or maybe it was simply the fact that Sopra Ginza was really good at what they do. Well we had the chance to experience for ourselves and bring you our personal review of the shop!

"It was great to have Jeryl and Nicole as dog trainers for my 4 month old puppy Schnauzer , Tommy.

I first came across Amber Toy Poodle even before adopting Tommy, when I posted a question on a Pets forum asking how one can choose a suitable puppy from a litter of several. Jeryl responded with great enthusiasm and answered many of the queries that I had about selecting a puppy. But the biggest takeaway was that he made me realize there was a lot more to learn about pack leadership in order to bring up my puppy to be sociable and well behaved.

"When I first brought back my toy poodle, Coco, she was only 2 months old. Like a teddy bear, brown and extremely cute. My hubby and I are both new to pets….totally clueless. What we thought about having a puppy was to get her a cage, toys and food then teach her to pee and poo at the place we wanted. When Coco came into our family…gosh~ it wasn’t as simple as I thought. She pee and poo wherever she likes, bites and growl at my girls (aged 4 and 7). Got into a shock seeing her behaviour and seeking everywhere for help from friends and even read from forum and stuff. Some say beat her, cane her and punish her….and I even got commented saying I don’t even know how to take care of a puppy, why get one and let the poor puppy suffer. So heart aching to hear that =(

"Bacon was a puppy who likes to bite anything he sees including human hands/legs. He always pawed on us, and often run like crazy around the house.
Ever since Nicole & Jeryl came over to train Bacon, I could see that Bacon has really changed. He became a more calm dog, hardly running around the house, he doesn't bite that often anymore. He also stopped pawing on us unless we allowed him to. I'm proud of him!"
Thank you Nicole & Jeryl :)
YingTing

IntroductionThere are many ways to housebreak your dog, every owners have different opinion on what housebreaking means and how to define a housebroken dog. To us, a housebroken dog should be able to pee and poop on the spot chosen, the dog should also be able to pee and poop on command. If you have plans to housebreak your dog, be prepared to work with your family to train your dog for about 3 weeks before you see any result, and at least 3-6 months to housebreak your dog completely.Why teamwork is importantGetting a dog should always be a family commitment, there should not be anyone in your family that doesn't like dogs. Because dogs are pack animals, they treat every single one in the family as a pack, anyone who hates the dog, or distance from the dog is considered breaking away from the pack, the dog might then feel stressed and start to show fear or aggression towards that person. There shouldn't be any miscommunication within the family either, always discuss methods a…

Many owners, especially first timers have no idea how to take care of their dogs after spay/neuter operation, owners that do not know what to expect could easily be traumatize by the experience along with their dog. This is why we have decided to come up with a tutorial on how to take proper care of your dog during the healing process. Before deciding on spaying/neutering your dog, it is good to first read up the pros and cons of doing it, don't spay/neuter your dog just because other people do it, check it up, study about it and take some time to decide.

18 August 2013 Amber at Discover Dogs 2012 Amber at this year's Discover Dogs 2013!
It's been a year since Amber's first visit to Discover Dogs 2012, she was around 8 months + and it was her very first dog event! We could still remember how curious, excited and happy Amber was at that time, sure there might have been some complications and also certain things we may not like about the event, but ultimately we still had a memorable and fun time hanging around and looking at other dogs which is why we had decided to attend this year's event again!

Another old saying and it never stops spreading, the tail of dogs are down because they feel uneasy about themselves, it can either be fear, insecure or stressed. Tail down is all about body languages, its not to block their back from other male dogs, even male dog's tail can be down.

We are always open about our training process and failures, we want to tell everyone that it is perfectly okay to fail at times, because failing only makes you better.

We always hear compliments about Amber when we bring her out, things like "I wish my dog could walk beside me too" and such. Well usually if we have time we'll explain to them that they can too get their dog to walk beside them, they simply needed to train their dog! Of course there are also some that says that we are lucky to get a dog that listens, some people truly believes that whether not a dog listens to their owner is through characteristics. We'll tell them that what they see in Amber is just the good side, what they did not see is how much time, effort and training we had put into our dog. It was just one year ago when we faced a lot of criticism during Amber's puppy stage, people think that having a puppy means that the person is a beginner and don't know what they are doing. They se…

We finally got the courage to bring our beloved Amber to a new grooming shop, which was called Loving Pets. We stumbled onto this shop while browsing an online pet forum called Petschannel, and saw a lot of good reviews, our motive was to find a good groomer that is near to where we stay.

After browsing through the reviews, we went to their website for a look. The website was not only badly designed, it was also empty, there seemed no purpose other than to tell people their address, no operating hours, no information on charges either, pretty horrible. We emailed them and there was no reply even after 3 working days so I called them up, I asked about their rates and whether they had received my email. The lady receiving the call then explained that it was because their email system was down and they were still revamping their website, we thought it was fair enough and since they had ensured that they practiced open concept grooming, we went ahead and booked a slot with them. Through t…

We could still remember the very first time we brought our late rabbit, Chocolate for grooming at Mas Mas, they were really passionate about their work. The way they handled and groomed Chocolate told us that we had always been visiting the wrong groomer in the past, if you didn't know, Chocolate's previous groomer hurt her a few times, traumatized and even scolded us for things we didn't understand. Mas Mas stayed in our head for years, and when we got Amber, the first groomer we thought of was Mas Mas. They did really well initially, if you had known us or even asked us for recommendations on a good groomer, we would not hesitate to recommend Mas Mas Groomers!

It has been 5 years since Chocolate's first grooming with them, even Amber has already been their customer for more than 1 year already! The thing is Mas Mas today seemed kind of different, the feeling we get when entering the shop is different, the welcome service, the appointment arrangem…

Dogs with depression are increasing everywhere we go, whenever we visit places like the beach, dog events or NEX playground we would always see dogs that are some what stressed / depressed. When we talk about depression in humans, right away we could more or less understand the behavior and symptoms of someone with this problem, this is because depression was introduced worldwide using all forms of education like advertisement, television, movies etc., if this were to happen to someone decades ago, no science would understand what was happening to the person, even doctors would not be able to diagnose the problem.

We are always at pets forums and other related websites, reading and helping other people as we go along. Through our experience we found that the frequent users (forum user that has a lot of post accumulated past the years) have major impact on people with questions. This is because most people think that "hey this user has 10,000 post, he/she must have lots of experience in what they do".

Haze in Singapore reaches hazardous level on Wednesday 19 June, with the PSI reading hitting an all-time high of 321 at 10pm.
It's advisable to:
- keep all your furkids indoor, do not walk them for these few days until the haze subside.
- turn on fans and air-conditioning to filter out the bad air at home
- drink lots and lots of water, as the air is very dry and bad, they will need more water to clear their system.
- do not forget to exercise them in order to drain their energy, playing catch and fetch is a good way to do indoor.
- do visit a vet if there are cough or respiratory symptoms

Many times, when humans find that they cannot point out the reason for certain things that had happened to their dogs, they blame it on spiritual beings. I have seen dog forums where people advice others that spiritual beings are the cause of barks and howls at night! It is kind of annoying at times where we are here trying to help people with dog problems and there someone is replying nonsense, asking the owner to sprinkle holy water and what not.

From my years of experience on dogs and other animals alike, there was never an animal problem that was left unsolved, reason was because I would go all the way to the root of the problem my pets had encountered, solve them and learn from there instead of pushing blame and treat them as an impossible case. By far even during obedience and corrective trainings we have never met any unsolved barking / howling case, it is usually the problem with how owners treat t…

Let's face it, we have come to an era where the Internet is a need, everything you read in books can be found on the Internet. The question is whether the stuff you read is coming from the same author, usually they are not and because everybody has their own opinions, plainly following online materials can actually do more harm than good to your dog.

A lot of people study about dogs online, and by doing this the brain naturally compile all the information they read into a "book", this is very dangerous if you are still learning the basics. When you mix things up, you are actually incorporating many different training methods and information into your dog, it will most likely get confused with the inconsistency and thus you may see unwanted behaviors caused by extreme frustration.

Online materials are good only if you have a certain problem that you can't find elsewhere, if you have a website that you…

"Our family decided to keep a pet and we were looking for a dog. While searching through the internet, we came across the Blog “ A Red Toy Poodle Story “. It was a great blog with lots of detailed information, especially so for us, who are first-time dog owner.

​​After more than 2 months, we thought it was time to bring Amber to NEX playground again! This time we decided to meet up with Toffee and his family to train him on some basic interaction as well as introducing Amber to them for the first time.
We had walked and played with Amber for about 40 minutes in the morning, she did really well, even showed some of her tricks to a Malay man, he was watching Amber from a distance and asked me if she knew how to sit, we proceeded to doing a series of tricks after sitting and he was so impressed that he was laughing during the whole performance, we were very proud of Amber :)

Today was a special day for Amber, it was her first ever swimming trip, we took her to Canine Wellness & Rehab, this place was located at Telok Kurau, in a corner that was quite hard to get to unless by cab, there's a bus stop nearby but if we didn't remember wrong only 2 buses were available.

"I’ve always wanted a small dog few years ago. I used to have one normal street dog, raised him since he is a puppy. But after I moved into an apartment, I had to give him up to my sister in law who own one landed house with space for him as well. I’m a dog lover but lack of patience. 3 weeks ago, my husband brings me to see a toy poodle. I was so excited and happy. He is 2 months old named Milo (pronounce as Mai Lo). Before making this decision, I asked questions like will he make a lot of noise and bark a lot cause I’m staying in an apartment. And the owner told me that he will just whine a bit cause he will need time to adjust himself at the new environment. So, the first night with Milo, the nightmare started because he was whining middle of the morning at 4am. I called up the owner and share to him about my situation. End up he ask me to cover the crate with a cloth, then Milo will keep quiet. So no choice, I took his piece of advise but I did not stop searching for solution…

Last week was the 3rd and last lesson of Toffee's training, some of you may have heard of Toffee, he is a 3.5 months old toy poodle puppy that is undergoing obedience training.

Among other dogs that trained with us, Toffee was considered one of the brightest we've had, apart from the fact that he was a poodle which are supposed to be an intelligent breed, his family actually played a bigger role in speeding up the training process, which is why we purposely made a post just for this, we strongly believe this will help people to study how different owners do things and how much it can affect their dog's training process.

Amber is now 1 year and 5 months old, there had been changes in her lifestyle and attitude throughout this year and we think it is good to share them.

Play bites

picture of a mischievous 3 month old Amber We had almost fully eliminated Amber's play bite problem until when we return from our trip, she became much more playful and always want to play bite with us, we have put a lot of work into this and Amber knows it but she needs more time, we understand as she is only with us for 3 weeks since our return.

Pets & Animals in Japan (Part 1)(Click Here for Part 2)
We are back from Japan, it has been about 3 weeks since our return! We missed Amber so much and went to get her from her caretaker the next morning! Amber was very happy to see us, we hid behind the gate and watched her but Amber noticed and turned to us right away, excited as she should be, it was understandable.

Ever since we started to blog about dogs, we had received a lot of questions and feedback on Amber's behavior and how we managed to train her on obedience, unlike other thoroughly trained dogs, Amber is actually happy and playful just like any dogs out there, however some had doubts and had asked us a lot of questions regarding our methods, therefore we think it is good to explain some of the stuff we do and how we believe benefits the dog.

A painting of Amber which i had done during my free time, we had a few inquiries about owners wanting to do a similar painting for their dogs too, as i do not have a lot of free time you may have to wait a while before it is your turn! Feel free to email us at amberwonderland@gmail.com for more questions~

Hi everyone~ We are back from our trip, once again we welcome all questions and comments from everyone! We will try our very best to answer them ASAP. Stay tuned for pictures and posts of how different dogs living in Japan, will update our blog VERY SOON! Happy blogging :D!

Hi guys, please direct your questions to our email box at amberwonderland@gmail.com , we are having trouble replying on the blog with our mobile phone, we will be able to resume as per normal once we return to Singapore on the 18th of April, thanks for understanding and have fun with your furkids!

"Few months back, we bought a 2 months old toy poodle, Toffee. It was our first time owning a dog. During his first week here, there were several situations regarding him adapting to his new environment.

Update 30 March 2013: As promised, we have uploaded video for this event below!

We went to east coast park once again for Pets Corner Event 2013, the weather was great throughout this time round!

Smiling for the camera, or not! We traveled by bus and reached around noon, it was sunny but not too hot for Amber to walk on, we walked her for about 5 minutes before letting her off leash to see if she was ready, this was her first time being off leash for walks around so many dogs. Amber actually got excited when she saw other dogs, running over to smell them even when i did not signal okay, i then tried to recall her back, she hesitated for awhile before listening. Amber actually did much better than we predicted, I did not expect her to react to my calls at this stage of her training, after passing by a few dogs she calmed down and did not approach other dogs without my permission anymore, she walked pretty well too (scroll down to last part for video)! When we reached the event booth we bo…

Many wonder whether a leash or harness is more suitable for their dog, which always result in never ending debate on which is inferior. In my opinion neither is better than each other, the choice is up to the owner whether how they want to control their dogs and also how much they trust the equipment. Note that this is our personal opinions on each individual equipment, there are no scientific fact or whatever prove of speech in this article, it is mostly made up of our experience and believes, we fully support the leash but we do admit there are advantages of other dog walking products out there.

Updated: 12/03/2013We decided to give this shop a 0.5 score boost as they have taken the initiative to upgrade their online shop as well as facebook page, we wanted to give more but found out they were actually more keen to promote selling their puppies than to boost customer service, also the website was pretty buggy. We will visit the shop again when we are free, hopefully we'll experience something different and live to tell our experience.

Hi everyone, just to let you know we will be out of Singapore from 31 March till 18 April 2013, we will not be able to provide any service until we return. If you have any questions during these period just drop an email to us at amberwonderland@gmail.com and we will try to answer your questions as frequently as we can!

We brought Amber to the reservoir on Saturday for her grooming again, her hair were getting longer, we could see the round teddy bear like shape on her snout now and thought she would look great with some trimming! We also decided it would be a good idea to go for grooming since we would be away from 31 March to 18 April, and on the 30th we will bring her for another grooming before we leave.

IntroductionThere were couple of enquiries regarding the video we posted on The Invisible Wall, because of this we have decided to post a tutorial on how we taught Amber how not to cross areas that we do not want her to step into, it is very simple yet effective method, even our favorite dog that boarded with us, Shinee learned in just 2 days!

When you first bring your new dog home, it will most likely experience a certain level of separation anxiety, this is very common with all dogs, main reason being not used to sudden change of environment and separation from parents at early stage. Things like separation from siblings, change of owners, different sleeping area/environment and even abrupt change of food can worsen the problem.

We have been blogging since January 2012, time really passes quickly, Amber is already 1 year old now! We have met many people through our blog, both online and offline, fortunately most are friendly, just some once in a while "troll" that comes along and attempt to bring down the blog. As much as we'd like to post updates about Amber and add more fun topics, readers should understand that the blog is not created for these purposes, if you are looking for fun stuff you could always like our Facebook page which has a lot of pictures and videos throughout Amber's life.